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Why is Google allowed to remove purchases from our Play Store accounts without telling us?
(www.androidpolice.com)
this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2024
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For Google, hosting an app is just a matter of keeping an entry in a database and its data in storage. It's not about the difficulty.
Furthermore, that app COST MONEY to the user. Here Google is not only removing the app from the store, they're also UNINSTALLING it from the user's device, without warning them, and without compensating them financially for this.
To make things even worse, their malware detection algorithm is prone to false positives. There's not even a degree of certainty, like "there's a 20% chance we could be making a mistake." A binary without tolerance means they are removing things only on the SUSPICION they could be malware.
I had a very useful open source app - that I installed WITHOUT Google play store - removed from my phone. It was never submitted to Google and neither the author nor I EVER agreed to their app store remove third party software from my phone.
Google have become control freaks over our phones. The only solution I see is to install a third party OS, like Lineage or Graphene. I might even have to buy a new phone for this, but I don't care. I don't want Google to assume the role of Nanny and take away control of MY devices that I bought with my own fucking money.